While his readers, listeners, and fans await the next installment of his The Land series, Aleron Kong has released another tangentially related title, Alpha. This one takes us back in time to before the opening scenes of God’s Eye: Awakening, and sometime following the events that kicked off the adventure in The Land. With some manipulation from certain Lords of Chaos, the Earth is connected to The Labyrinth, and all hell breaks loose. The changes are immediate, but the extent to which these changes alter the planet (and the life living here) is relatively gradual. Of course, those of us who have made it through God’s Eye: Awakening are aware of how this turns out for Earth and the human species. It is interesting to see how it all starts off, though.

We’re introduced to Fin and Lauren, a couple deeply in love and tragically bearing witness to the force of chaos piercing the planet and opening the bridge to The Labyrinth. Fin served in the military during the Third World War and became an ER doctor in his civilian life afterward, setting him up to be a more capable protagonist than our previous main characters in Kong’s books. The tone of this book shifts accordingly, as Fin (our narrator) is a man inured to violence and capable of cruelty when properly motivated.

I personally found Fin to be a reasonably compelling, three-dimensional character. He’s frequently at odds with his personal history and the way it shaped him, as he struggles to be the man Lauren helped him see he could become. This internal conflict and the dichotomy of the soldier vs. the physician is ever-present throughout the narrative and adds a bit more depth to the whole.

The introduction to the interface system on Earth is interesting, though occasionally a bit on the tedious side…but this is an introductory story, so that’s to be expected. There are definite differences from what we’re acquainted with in The Land and God’s Eye, and the fact that the planet itself is incorporated into the system was a nice touch.

Unfortunately, there isn’t much meat to this story. It largely takes place in a hospital as Fin explores the new features that have changed the world. Though they are satisfying, there’s not much movement as far as the plot is concerned, as the focus remains almost exclusively on character development. The conflict, when it arrives is a pleasant change, but the cliffhanger ending is an issue I have with most of Kong’s work. His books aren’t self-encapsulated and that leaves them feeling incomplete and mildly frustrating as we wait for the next installment that will invariably suffer from the same characteristic abrupt conclusion.

My other issue is with unattributed pop culture references. Notably, a cribbed section from High Fidelity really struck me as off-putting. It’s fine to incorporate pop culture references in fiction. Farscape, a television series from 20 years ago, handled it phenomenally well. The protagonist acknowledged that he was referencing things other characters would not recognize, and it was done with a wink and a nod. In Alpha, that particular reference was treated as if it was some witty thought process of the character. That didn’t sit well with me. There’s also the reality that people now hardly recognize references to High Fidelity, and it seems highly unlikely that a soldier from a good distance into our future would have no reason to have read or seen it.

Pavi Proczko’s narration is excellent. All three of the narrators who signed on to work with Kong have brought his works to life in a way that I consider admirable. Narrating a LitRPG title can’t be the easiest thing. Proczko does a great job of conveying the emotional fluctuations Fin experiences as the story progresses, and that’s definitely something different narrators struggle with.